As I’ve mentioned numerous times—and
as anyone who has been following my blog since the beginning can attest—the
current blog is not exactly what I had envisioned when I started this thing.
My original idea was that it would be
made up of silly and perhaps outrageous stories of things I encountered in
Vegas, some at the poker table, some elsewhere.
I really hadn’t expected to be talking about actual poker nearly as much
as I have. But the blog has a mind of
its own. I’m still on the lookout for
silly and outrageous stories of course…they just seem to come at me less and
less frequently. And fortunately, I’ve had
many, many things to say about poker to make up for it—hopefully some of it is
even insightful.
But this past Saturday something
happened at the table that was very much in line with the kind of stories I initially
expected to be telling here. In fact,
the story reminded me of one I told before the blog was even a month old. That story you can find here. Since it is so old, I doubt most of my
current readers have ever read it, so you might want to take a look at it,
should be new to most of you.
And I dare say, having just re-read that
post for the first time in years while getting ready to write this post, I
believe this might have been the post that gave Prudence the totally ridiculous notion that I am “obsessed with bosoms” (see here for another one of my earliest
posts.).
The surprising thing was that this
happened in L.A., not Las Vegas. I mean,
I sure didn’t expect to get another story about a woman almost flashing her
boobs in an L.A. casino. Vegas is
usually full of women who tempt the fates and come dangerously close to
exposing the boobs, unintentionally or otherwise. I guess that’s one of the
things I love about Vegas. Sure, L.A.
has places where that is more likely to happen to, but L.A. poker rooms are not
any of the places.]
Usually.
So there I was playing 1/2 at the PC
Ventura again. After about an hour, a
well dressed, mature woman took a seat across from me. Now the star of that early post I linked was
middle-aged, and this lady was probably a bit beyond middle aged. I have no
idea if this lady is collecting social security, but I’d bet that she is old
enough to. The lady in my original story
I called Joan, so let’s call this lady Joan2.
By the way, when I just now read my old post, I had no idea if Joan was
her real name or if I pseudonymed her. I
decided to check my name conversations spreadsheet and sure enough, not only
was “Joan” on it with her real name, but she was actually the very first entry
on it!
As I said, Joan2 was neatly
dressed. Nice jewelry, hair perfectly in
place, nice, almost professional looking outfit for a woman her age. She could have easily gone to work in any
office I’ve ever seen in that outfit.
She had a nice jacket on, and underneath that was a top that was perhaps
the only problem with the outfit. It was
a tad lowcut, and she was showing some cleavage. Not much, mostly because that jacket covered
most of her, but some. Of course, I am
not morally opposed to cleavage (shocking, I know). But sadly, I think there is an age-limit for
this, and I think this woman was on the other side of the limit.
Still, it wasn’t like it was offensive
or anything. And then, suddenly, I
looked up and she was reaching into her top and I saw the white of her bra for
a second, and then she stuck her bra back into her top and that was the end of
it. I assume she was adjusting her bra. At least that was all I saw. Perhaps the dealer, a guy who was probably
approaching middle-age, may have seen more.
Or maybe not. All I know is that
Joan2 was laughing and saying something like, “I didn’t mean to do that,” or
maybe “I shouldn’t have done that.” And she made some reference to exposing
herself, but I don’t think she used either the words “flash” or “boobs” (or any
other euphemism for breasts).
The dealer however, was not about to
let this go. He said something like,
“Well, I certainly didn’t expect to see anything like that when I woke up this
morning.” Then he added, “I’ve seen
smaller pocket pairs.” A few minutes
later, Joan2 won a pot, and as the dealer pushed it to her, he said, “Well
there you go, you show me your breasts, I’ve got to push a pot.” Joan2 giggled with just a little bit of
embarrassment every time the dealer made a crack like this. At one point, she did say to the woman next
to her, “I should have gone to the Ladies Room to do that.”
Honestly, I was a bit surprised the
dealer would make the comment about the lady showing him her breasts. Seems rather inappropriate, even if Joan2 was
being a good sport about. I suspect that
Joan2 is a regular though, and the dealer probably had a pretty good idea Joan2
was cool.
A few minutes later, as he was dealing
the hand, he said to a older gentleman sitting two seats away from Joan2, and
obviously a regular, “Now David, don’t you go showing me your breasts. It won’t work if you do that.” David insisted he had no such intention.
Had the dealer seen appreciably more
than I had? I don’t think so, but I
can’t be sure. And other than for the
purpose of this story, I’m not really worried that I might have missed a
boob-flash or a semi-boob flash. I might
have seen a teeny, tiny bit of additional cleavage when she reached in, that
was it.
But anyway, those weren’t the boobs I
was looking for. So if I missed them, I
didn’t really miss them. As it
happened, again unusual for an L.A. poker room, there actually was a rather
attractive, much younger woman sitting immediately on my right. I dare say, if one of the women at the table was
going to be showing more boobage than they intended, I certainly would have
wanted it to be the woman on my right.
I noticed her before she got to the
table. For just a brief second, from a
distance, I spotted her as she was headed to the table. I saw blonde hair and cleavage—lots of
it—approaching. But in a nano-second
they were gone, as she zipped up her sweatshirt to the very top—and it was a
turtle neck. But she had a very impressive
figure. Both the sweatshirt and her
sweatpants (maybe yoga pants?) were form fitting. Her bosom was several levels beyond being
“ample” and the rest of her figure was outstanding as well. She had curves in all the right places. And let me just say, I saw her leave the
table a few times, and viewing her walking away was a very pleasant sight.
Now, those were the boobs I
was looking for. Sadly, she never
unzipped her sweatshirt.
As for the poker, there were not a lot
of interesting hands. I was never down
too much, and then came back. I guess
the best hand was when I rivered a King-high flush. I bet the river and just called a raise,
fearing the Ace-high flush was out there.
But his was only Queen-high.
At this table, there was not a lot of
preflop raising at all. And the preflop
raises there were were all pretty small (less than $10). What is interesting is that I seemed to be
the only one at the table who knew you had to increase your raise if there were
a lot of limpers. So perhaps the most
telling hand was when I had Queen-Jack of diamonds in late position. There were a ton of limpers. I probably
should have made it $16 but figured $14 was good enough. I was right, not one of the limpers, or the
blinds, called. I think anyone else at
that table who had a hand they wanted to raise with in my position wouldn’t
have made it above $8 and probably gotten a few calls. I was happy grabbing all the limps and not
having to pay a rake.
The worst hand for me was actually one
where I dodged a bullet. I raised to $10
after one limper with pocket Aces. I got three callers which made it one of the
biggest preflop pots I saw. The flop was
Jack-high, two diamonds, and the one red Ace in my hand was a heart. I bet out $30 and a short stack shoved for
$67. I had about $90 at that point. I think I would have called purely on a
stack-to-pot ratio basis but another player shoved as well. He had me covered by quite a bit. I just didn’t think my Aces were good against
two all-ins, so I folded. The shorter stack
had a set of Jacks. The bigger stack had
King-9 of diamonds. He missed his
flush—but went runner-runner for a straight.
I got off cheap.
There’s one other hand I’ll mention
that I was only in marginally, but I thought it was interesting. A bunch of limpers, then the guy in the
cut-off—the closest thing we had to an aggro—made it $6. Again, way too many limpers for that small a
raise. I was the small blind and decided
to take a small risk by calling with Jack-8 of diamonds. I figured the pot would get pretty large and
it was worth a nickel to try to smash it.
But then, when it got around to the under-the-gun player, he bumped it
to $26. Interesting. He had limped in It folded to the raiser who tanked forever,
and then shoved (over $100). I had him
covered but didn’t waste any time folding.
The limp/re-raiser shoved (a bit less than the raiser). They both
showed. The UTG player had two
Aces. The other guy had Ace-King. Ace-King didn’t improve and the guy with Aces
had a nice double up.
I probably shouldn’t even mention that
there was a Jack on the flop and an 8 on the river, so if I had shoved preflop
I would have won. But of course, that
would have been a terrible play on my part.
The thing I want to mention though is
the guy pulling the ol’ limp/re-raise move.
I thought it was a terrible play on his part. I did a post about the limp/re-raise a couple
of years back (here). At the time, I just ranted against it on
general principles, just because it pissed me off. But now, I realize that it can sometimes be a
very good play.
But not in this situation. The guy had been at the table long enough to
know that there wasn’t much preflop raising going on at this table. So it was a stupid risk, most likely having
to hope those Aces would hold up against 5-6 other hands. He was lucky he found someone with
Ace-King. Actually, there were plenty of
players at this table that wouldn’t have raised with Ace-King.
Anyway, seems to me you have to have a
certain kind of table to attempt the limp/re-raise with your Aces. If you are at a game where preflop raises are
the norm, and someone is always raising, then yeah, take a risk that this won’t
be the one hand in 10 where everyone limps.
Or sometimes you’re at a table where that one certain maniac raises 90%
of the time. Sure, go ahead and limp,
knowing the odds are overwhelming that the maniac is going to raise and you can
re-pop it. But man, at this table? Dumb move, but it totally worked out for him.
Anyway, that was probably the last
session here in town before I hit Vegas for the first weekend of March
Madness. I was experimenting around the
past few weeks with the shortish buy-in 1/2
game. It was kind of fun as a
change of pace. Dunno if I go back to it
when I return from Vegas. Will have to
see. Anyway, I managed to eek out a $20
profit in a few hours.
